United States Agency for International Development - USAID and the CIA - Encyclopedia II

The question of USAID’s relation to the Central Intelligence Agency is a controversial one.

Most claim that there was in the past, but no longer is, a relationship between the CIA and USAID. Others disagree.

Some assert that the CIA has used USAID to provide support for its programs. For example, Louis Wolf, co-publisher of CovertAction Quarterly, who worked in Laos from 1964 to 1967, asserts that some of the CIA personnel working in Operation Phoenix in Vietnam were working under USAID cover. John Paul Vann is another critic who linked the two.

In a lecture given in 2000 at the University of the Philippines-Manila, Roland G. Simbulan described the importance of the CIA’s operations in the Philippines, and noted: “During my interview in 1996 with Ralph McGehee, a former CIA agent, and other former CIA operatives assigned to the Manila station, I was told that the CIA had many unheralded successes in the Philippines such as the manipulation of the trade union movement through the Asian-American Free Labor Institute (AAFLI) and through funds which were channeled through the USAID, Asia Foundation and National Endowment for Democracy.” [3]

Eva Gollinger, for example, maintains that the USAID was being used by the CIA as recently as the 2002 attempt to bring down the government of Hugo Chávez in Venezuela. [4]

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "USAID and the CIA", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page